It ocurred to me that another conversation that needs light like your reddit source Eliza is 'supportive mothers' facebook groups. This population needs exposure in the worst possible way.
Lisa, I am disappointed. Your usual nuanced look at things is absent when you talk about Israel-Palestine war. I get that it hits very close to home but you make some terribly gross overstatements. I also fear trying to perfectly overlay one issue (trans ideology) over another (israel-Palestine) is simplistic and too convenient of a way to dismiss legitimate arguments about the war. There are certainly good comparisons but I think you are grasping at too many straws to justify your beliefs about the conflict.
Might be worth looking into, though some 2 hours of talking heads is a bit much -- Benjamin is a bit of blatherskite. But the transcript might we worth reading though I don't see much about gender on a quick skim.
Though not terribly impressed with Davis, not least because she's blocked me, probably for some unfathomable and questionable reasons ... 😉🙂 But particularly so since I've periodically offered some "fulsome" praise over there, particularly for her "Both Sides" post:
Quote:
LSD (?): "We need a bipartisan coalition to draft sane and humane policies that acknowledge the reality of gender diversity but push back against restrictive ideologically-driven rules that both deny reality and compel speech and impose beliefs on all of us. We need to listen. And then we need to talk."
Amen to that.
And it seems that one of the biggest reasons for everyone talking past each other is wildly contradictory definitions for the concepts in play, "sex" and "gender" in particular. A case in point is your example of your neighbor seeing "male" and "female" as identities - and immutable ones at that - rather than as sexes which is typical of most biologists worth their salt.
So far, I have listened to about an hour's worth at the gym and it got me through my exercise, so pretty good! I mostly agree with everything they are saying, with perhaps some subtle differences.
I would say it's worth your time, Steersman - even if LSD (I never realized that before) banned you. You know some people are bothered by your controversial position on the definition of "male" and "female" and I'm guessing LSD is one of them. For the record, while I disagree with your definitions (I believe menopausal women and pre-menstrual girls are "female," for example), I am not at all bothered by them because I know you are coming from a very good place. Intention matters! :)
"Blatherskite" - new to me. A little harsh for Benjamin. While he sometimes throws silly comments out there, I think he usually makes a lot of sense, asks good questions, and listens well. His interviews with Dr. Will Malone and certain detransitioners were some of my early introduction to this topic. I found the interviews to be informative, and him to be sensitive and also lighthearted.
Thanks muchly Hippiesq -- particularly as I was a bit "nonplussed" by your "ad nauseum" comment. 🙂 Though quite understandable -- I've been known to flog a horse to death -- and beyond -- before ... 😉🙂 Think Freddy de Boer had an amusing image along that line, though can't find it at the moment.
Somewhat apropos of Lisa's "bipartisan coalition" -- an eminently sensible idea -- I ran across something from The Distance that kind of illustrates the problem -- which you might want to weigh-in on -- here, there, or about 🙂:
They're quoting a parent's group that looks to be doing good work, but I think they're shooting themselves in the feet with a rather dogmatic perspective on gender that is a large part of the problem:
"The view that ‘gender is a spectrum’ is not a fact but a belief system promoted by a very small percentage of the population ..."
I quite appreciate that you and I at least agree on the dichotomy between sex and gender, and generally, if I'm not mistaken, on the definition endorsed by Merriam Webster:
"gender: the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex"
"gender" -- as a range of sexually dimorphic personality traits -- is quite reasonably defined as a spectrum while "sex" is reasonably defined as a binary, the specifics on which we might reasonably disagree. 🙂
But I'll definitely take a closer look at the transcript of Benjamin's interview.
I believe gender has multiple meanings and one is the exact one you mention, and is definitely on a spectrum and also varies in other ways (it's not just a scale of masculine to feminine, but, as you and I have discussed, particular ways of being masculine and/or feminine and/or neutral and potential variation over time and from time to time in all of those characteristics).
"Gender" has also been used in the past (and perhaps that is what helped get us into this messy confusion) as a synonym for "sex." That is, on forms, it would say check your gender: male __ female __.
I think we have to be clear nowadays about which way we are using the term because context doesn't seem to do it in the same way it did before, when the context made it obvious which way it was being used.
Nowadays, people say things like "Trans means your gender doesn't match your body's sex," as if that makes any sense. Either your gender IS your sex, as it was previously meant to be on forms, etc., or your gender doesn't have to "match" your sex because they are two somewhat related but totally different things. A masculine woman is a woman nonetheless as is a feminine man, and neither are "trans." And again, most of us aren't totally feminine or totally masculine. My daughter, for example, is rather feminine although, like all of us, she has a few things where she is either ambiguous or slightly masculine. What then is her "gender?" To me, it's either "female" because we are using it as we would use sex, or it's a mix of various feminine, masculine and neutral characteristics that also vary from time to time and over time - which cannot be matched up to her body's sex.
Sorry to go on and on, but, like you, I think the definition of "gender" is a big part of the problem here.
BTW, I finished the podcast, and it was all good. I measure that by whether I would have enjoyed being part of the discussion, and I would have.
> "I believe gender has multiple meanings and one is the exact one you mention, and is definitely on a spectrum and also varies in other ways (it's not just a scale of masculine to feminine ...)"
Indeed. Though, as quibble and as we've discussed, it's really not a matter of "belief", but of fact -- there ARE published definitions for "gender" which endorse or encompass the idea of sexually dimorphic personality traits.
Though not quite sure what you're getting at with your "not just a scale of masculine to feminine". By definition, or at least to the extent of sexually dimorphic personality traits, gender is EITHER masculine OR feminine. And if some trait doesn't show any difference by sex then it's "genderless". We all, presumably, have hearts -- though women might be more in-tune with theirs ... 🙂 -- so it's neither a masculine nor a feminine trait. Though I agree with your point about what qualifies as what changes over time.
But somewhat more broadly, you might take a gander at what philosopher of science, Paul Griffiths, says about "What are biological sexes?":
PG: "Like chromosomes, the phenotypic characteristics of an organism can only be labelled as ‘male’ or ‘female’ if there is already a definition of sex."
SAME thing with genders, i.e., sexually dimorphic "phenotypes". We can't possibly say what is a masculine or feminine trait unless we have FIRST defined exactly what we MEAN by "male" and "female" -- as sexes. Hence my emphasis on the strict biological definitions for the sexes -- there IS some method in my madness ... 😉🙂
Somewhat en passant, or more particularly, one might reasonably argue that there may well be some personality differences, by sex, which depend rather heavily on whether one actually has functional gonads of one sort or another. For instance, many animals -- mostly males for some reason which might reasonably be called a crime against nature ... -- are castrated or sterilized because it makes them more docile, more manageable. One might then argue that, if we were really serious about finding out differences in personalities by sex then we really should restrict the survey populations to those who actually have functional gonads -- i.e., to those who are actually males and females ... 😉🙂
> "Sorry to go on and on, but, like you, I think the definition of "gender" is a big part of the problem here."
No problemo -- music to my ears. 🙂 But "amen" to your "big part of the problem" -- part of the reason for some of my criticisms of both Jenny and UB -- they too seem to have a rather "murky" idea of the difference between sex and gender which is a large part of the same problem:
Though I see that Jenny has Liked my recent comment on a recent post by UB -- worth a gander BTW; UB is a going concern -- so maybe some dawning realization of that difference:
But you may wish to review some of the comments over on Jenny's interview of UB, particularly by Matt Osborne who seems to have a rather clueless, and quite problematic, conception of both -- maybe fire a shot or two across his bow? 😉🙂
I don't want to add fuel to the fire with Osbourne, which is why I ignored his comment. He's very dismissive of you, so ignoring him seems exactly the right response.
I can't recall any specifics on the podcast, or the timing, but they do get to the issue at hand in several places. I would recommend skimming through the transcript. You'll see the interesting points pretty quickly. One point where I disagree was early on. Eliza and Lisa both believe this issue may go on and on forever, like gun control. I see this more like some of the examples Eliza gave as analogous, such as satanic panic or recovered memories or Thalidomide. I would add opioids and lobotomies, telling new mothers not to breastfeed their babies, ovarectomies, hormones given to make kids "normal" heights when they were predicted to be too short (boys) or tall (girls) to the mix. Anyway, even though we have the technology for changing the appearance of primary and/or secondary sex characteristics, I think this will return to being a fringe business. I don't know that Lisa or Eliza would really disagree as they seemed to note this point, but they started out saying this may be something we will have to live with for a long time to come, and I disagree. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I have to stay hopeful on this.
What I meant by saying "gender" (when we are using it to describe behaviors and preferences rather than as a synonym for sex) is not just a pure spectrum was that, while masculinity to femininity is a sort of spectrum, with more neutral behaviors and preferences - those you would say are neither male nor female, like enjoying a nice meal or sleeping when tired or a preference for a comfortable couch or clean water - in between, with variation over time and from time to time for both society's definitions and an individual's own preferences and behaviors, people may not fall squarely on a number line. It would be more of a zigzag, with qualities that are more masculine, more feminine, or more neutral in the various array of characteristics. I guess it could be hundreds of different intersecting spectrums, like one for preferences of shirts, one for preferences for pants or for skirts, one for how one talks, one for what one likes to talk about, one for how one walks, one or perhaps several, as there are different areas of this, for hygiene preferences, one for how one's face looks, one for musculature or tone, and on and on. One might fall well into the masculine zone of some of these little spectrums, towards the middle for others, and more towards the feminine on others - and again this will vary from time to time and over time. Also complicating things, while many qualities deemed masculine or feminine do roughly coincide with males and females (some being more common in males and others more common in females), some don't even really relate to males and females in any straightforward way. Do females and the color "pink" or males and the color "blue" really relate directly in nature, or did society randomly pick these colors to represent them and they just caught on? I tend to think it's the latter.
I'd be offended if you talked that way about Mad Max Fury Road, but Furiosa sadly wasn't as great. It's like comparing the Hobbit movies to the LotR movies.
You should totally give Fury Road a shot, it's about a group of young women fleeing an oppressive, crazy, post-apocalyptic patriarchy. It's a weird and crazy world, but maybe it's the wrong kind of weird for you.
Given how important literal manpower was for most of human history just to get infrastructure built and maintained there is probably some truth to that, though there would probably have been fewer wars to tear said infrastructure down.
It ocurred to me that another conversation that needs light like your reddit source Eliza is 'supportive mothers' facebook groups. This population needs exposure in the worst possible way.
I enjoyed seeing Lisa and Eliza together--two of my favorite writers on these topics!
Lisa, I am disappointed. Your usual nuanced look at things is absent when you talk about Israel-Palestine war. I get that it hits very close to home but you make some terribly gross overstatements. I also fear trying to perfectly overlay one issue (trans ideology) over another (israel-Palestine) is simplistic and too convenient of a way to dismiss legitimate arguments about the war. There are certainly good comparisons but I think you are grasping at too many straws to justify your beliefs about the conflict.
It seems to me that people with horrible taste in music seem to play it the loudest.Perhaps my own metaphor for screaming trans activists.
Looking forward to this one with two of my favorite Substack writers!
Might be worth looking into, though some 2 hours of talking heads is a bit much -- Benjamin is a bit of blatherskite. But the transcript might we worth reading though I don't see much about gender on a quick skim.
Though not terribly impressed with Davis, not least because she's blocked me, probably for some unfathomable and questionable reasons ... 😉🙂 But particularly so since I've periodically offered some "fulsome" praise over there, particularly for her "Both Sides" post:
Quote:
LSD (?): "We need a bipartisan coalition to draft sane and humane policies that acknowledge the reality of gender diversity but push back against restrictive ideologically-driven rules that both deny reality and compel speech and impose beliefs on all of us. We need to listen. And then we need to talk."
Amen to that.
And it seems that one of the biggest reasons for everyone talking past each other is wildly contradictory definitions for the concepts in play, "sex" and "gender" in particular. A case in point is your example of your neighbor seeing "male" and "female" as identities - and immutable ones at that - rather than as sexes which is typical of most biologists worth their salt.
Unquote:
https://www.broadview.news/p/both-sides-now/comment/7293380
Even had an "honourable mention" there from Lisa's "editor" or factotum, Kate Parker:
https://www.broadview.news/p/broadview-in-brief-878/comment/40056691
So far, I have listened to about an hour's worth at the gym and it got me through my exercise, so pretty good! I mostly agree with everything they are saying, with perhaps some subtle differences.
I would say it's worth your time, Steersman - even if LSD (I never realized that before) banned you. You know some people are bothered by your controversial position on the definition of "male" and "female" and I'm guessing LSD is one of them. For the record, while I disagree with your definitions (I believe menopausal women and pre-menstrual girls are "female," for example), I am not at all bothered by them because I know you are coming from a very good place. Intention matters! :)
"Blatherskite" - new to me. A little harsh for Benjamin. While he sometimes throws silly comments out there, I think he usually makes a lot of sense, asks good questions, and listens well. His interviews with Dr. Will Malone and certain detransitioners were some of my early introduction to this topic. I found the interviews to be informative, and him to be sensitive and also lighthearted.
Thanks muchly Hippiesq -- particularly as I was a bit "nonplussed" by your "ad nauseum" comment. 🙂 Though quite understandable -- I've been known to flog a horse to death -- and beyond -- before ... 😉🙂 Think Freddy de Boer had an amusing image along that line, though can't find it at the moment.
Somewhat apropos of Lisa's "bipartisan coalition" -- an eminently sensible idea -- I ran across something from The Distance that kind of illustrates the problem -- which you might want to weigh-in on -- here, there, or about 🙂:
https://www.thedistancemag.com/p/what-not-to-do-a-top-ten-list-of
https://thehomoarchy.com/lgbt-trans-parents-schools-activism
They're quoting a parent's group that looks to be doing good work, but I think they're shooting themselves in the feet with a rather dogmatic perspective on gender that is a large part of the problem:
"The view that ‘gender is a spectrum’ is not a fact but a belief system promoted by a very small percentage of the population ..."
I quite appreciate that you and I at least agree on the dichotomy between sex and gender, and generally, if I'm not mistaken, on the definition endorsed by Merriam Webster:
"gender: the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gender#usage-1
"gender" -- as a range of sexually dimorphic personality traits -- is quite reasonably defined as a spectrum while "sex" is reasonably defined as a binary, the specifics on which we might reasonably disagree. 🙂
But I'll definitely take a closer look at the transcript of Benjamin's interview.
I believe gender has multiple meanings and one is the exact one you mention, and is definitely on a spectrum and also varies in other ways (it's not just a scale of masculine to feminine, but, as you and I have discussed, particular ways of being masculine and/or feminine and/or neutral and potential variation over time and from time to time in all of those characteristics).
"Gender" has also been used in the past (and perhaps that is what helped get us into this messy confusion) as a synonym for "sex." That is, on forms, it would say check your gender: male __ female __.
I think we have to be clear nowadays about which way we are using the term because context doesn't seem to do it in the same way it did before, when the context made it obvious which way it was being used.
Nowadays, people say things like "Trans means your gender doesn't match your body's sex," as if that makes any sense. Either your gender IS your sex, as it was previously meant to be on forms, etc., or your gender doesn't have to "match" your sex because they are two somewhat related but totally different things. A masculine woman is a woman nonetheless as is a feminine man, and neither are "trans." And again, most of us aren't totally feminine or totally masculine. My daughter, for example, is rather feminine although, like all of us, she has a few things where she is either ambiguous or slightly masculine. What then is her "gender?" To me, it's either "female" because we are using it as we would use sex, or it's a mix of various feminine, masculine and neutral characteristics that also vary from time to time and over time - which cannot be matched up to her body's sex.
Sorry to go on and on, but, like you, I think the definition of "gender" is a big part of the problem here.
BTW, I finished the podcast, and it was all good. I measure that by whether I would have enjoyed being part of the discussion, and I would have.
> "I believe gender has multiple meanings and one is the exact one you mention, and is definitely on a spectrum and also varies in other ways (it's not just a scale of masculine to feminine ...)"
Indeed. Though, as quibble and as we've discussed, it's really not a matter of "belief", but of fact -- there ARE published definitions for "gender" which endorse or encompass the idea of sexually dimorphic personality traits.
Though not quite sure what you're getting at with your "not just a scale of masculine to feminine". By definition, or at least to the extent of sexually dimorphic personality traits, gender is EITHER masculine OR feminine. And if some trait doesn't show any difference by sex then it's "genderless". We all, presumably, have hearts -- though women might be more in-tune with theirs ... 🙂 -- so it's neither a masculine nor a feminine trait. Though I agree with your point about what qualifies as what changes over time.
But somewhat more broadly, you might take a gander at what philosopher of science, Paul Griffiths, says about "What are biological sexes?":
PG: "Like chromosomes, the phenotypic characteristics of an organism can only be labelled as ‘male’ or ‘female’ if there is already a definition of sex."
https://philarchive.org/rec/GRIWAB-2
SAME thing with genders, i.e., sexually dimorphic "phenotypes". We can't possibly say what is a masculine or feminine trait unless we have FIRST defined exactly what we MEAN by "male" and "female" -- as sexes. Hence my emphasis on the strict biological definitions for the sexes -- there IS some method in my madness ... 😉🙂
Somewhat en passant, or more particularly, one might reasonably argue that there may well be some personality differences, by sex, which depend rather heavily on whether one actually has functional gonads of one sort or another. For instance, many animals -- mostly males for some reason which might reasonably be called a crime against nature ... -- are castrated or sterilized because it makes them more docile, more manageable. One might then argue that, if we were really serious about finding out differences in personalities by sex then we really should restrict the survey populations to those who actually have functional gonads -- i.e., to those who are actually males and females ... 😉🙂
> "Sorry to go on and on, but, like you, I think the definition of "gender" is a big part of the problem here."
No problemo -- music to my ears. 🙂 But "amen" to your "big part of the problem" -- part of the reason for some of my criticisms of both Jenny and UB -- they too seem to have a rather "murky" idea of the difference between sex and gender which is a large part of the same problem:
https://jennypoyerackerman.substack.com/p/listen-to-ep-10-with-unyielding-bicyclist/comment/62684479
Though I see that Jenny has Liked my recent comment on a recent post by UB -- worth a gander BTW; UB is a going concern -- so maybe some dawning realization of that difference:
https://badfacts.substack.com/p/can-evidence-based-medicine-take/comment/63294747
But you may wish to review some of the comments over on Jenny's interview of UB, particularly by Matt Osborne who seems to have a rather clueless, and quite problematic, conception of both -- maybe fire a shot or two across his bow? 😉🙂
https://jennypoyerackerman.substack.com/p/listen-to-ep-10-with-unyielding-bicyclist/comment/62744598
> "... I finished the podcast, and it was all good. ..."
Anything in particular, particularly about gender, that you could point me in the direction of? 🙂
I don't want to add fuel to the fire with Osbourne, which is why I ignored his comment. He's very dismissive of you, so ignoring him seems exactly the right response.
I can't recall any specifics on the podcast, or the timing, but they do get to the issue at hand in several places. I would recommend skimming through the transcript. You'll see the interesting points pretty quickly. One point where I disagree was early on. Eliza and Lisa both believe this issue may go on and on forever, like gun control. I see this more like some of the examples Eliza gave as analogous, such as satanic panic or recovered memories or Thalidomide. I would add opioids and lobotomies, telling new mothers not to breastfeed their babies, ovarectomies, hormones given to make kids "normal" heights when they were predicted to be too short (boys) or tall (girls) to the mix. Anyway, even though we have the technology for changing the appearance of primary and/or secondary sex characteristics, I think this will return to being a fringe business. I don't know that Lisa or Eliza would really disagree as they seemed to note this point, but they started out saying this may be something we will have to live with for a long time to come, and I disagree. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I have to stay hopeful on this.
What I meant by saying "gender" (when we are using it to describe behaviors and preferences rather than as a synonym for sex) is not just a pure spectrum was that, while masculinity to femininity is a sort of spectrum, with more neutral behaviors and preferences - those you would say are neither male nor female, like enjoying a nice meal or sleeping when tired or a preference for a comfortable couch or clean water - in between, with variation over time and from time to time for both society's definitions and an individual's own preferences and behaviors, people may not fall squarely on a number line. It would be more of a zigzag, with qualities that are more masculine, more feminine, or more neutral in the various array of characteristics. I guess it could be hundreds of different intersecting spectrums, like one for preferences of shirts, one for preferences for pants or for skirts, one for how one talks, one for what one likes to talk about, one for how one walks, one or perhaps several, as there are different areas of this, for hygiene preferences, one for how one's face looks, one for musculature or tone, and on and on. One might fall well into the masculine zone of some of these little spectrums, towards the middle for others, and more towards the feminine on others - and again this will vary from time to time and over time. Also complicating things, while many qualities deemed masculine or feminine do roughly coincide with males and females (some being more common in males and others more common in females), some don't even really relate to males and females in any straightforward way. Do females and the color "pink" or males and the color "blue" really relate directly in nature, or did society randomly pick these colors to represent them and they just caught on? I tend to think it's the latter.
Isn't this all fascinating?
I'd be offended if you talked that way about Mad Max Fury Road, but Furiosa sadly wasn't as great. It's like comparing the Hobbit movies to the LotR movies.
You should totally give Fury Road a shot, it's about a group of young women fleeing an oppressive, crazy, post-apocalyptic patriarchy. It's a weird and crazy world, but maybe it's the wrong kind of weird for you.
> "If civilization had been left in female hands we would still be living in grass huts." Camille Paglia 😉🙂
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/camille_paglia_159814
How can Camille know that?
Given how important literal manpower was for most of human history just to get infrastructure built and maintained there is probably some truth to that, though there would probably have been fewer wars to tear said infrastructure down.
Other ways of knowing? 🤔😉🙂 Kind of think she has merit for that view:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camille_Paglia
Though no doubt that "civilization" and "progress" is something of a mixed blessing -- Icarus, and Prometheus, and the Sorcerer's Apprentice.
But you don't throw a tool away because you've burned your fingers, at least not wisely.